Rainout Leads Yankees to Schedule Rare Single-Admission Doubleheader

By Wallace Matthews

May 13, 2017

Call this one two for 2: On the day the Yankees will retire Derek Jeter’s No. 2, Yankees fans will get two games for the price of one.

Because of the rainout of Saturday’s game against the Houston Astros — a cancellation that was announced at 5 a.m., eight hours before the scheduled first pitch, in anticipation of unplayable conditions — the Yankees are scheduled to play a rare single-admission doubleheader on Sunday.

The decision was made because of the logistical difficulties of clearing the ballpark and parking lots and refilling them in time for fans to be in their seats by 6:15 p.m. The Jeter ceremony is scheduled to begin no earlier than 6:35 p.m., with the second game to start about an hour later.

The ceremony is expected to last about 40 minutes and to be attended by at least 20 people who played with or coached Jeter or who were associated with the Yankees during his tenure. Alex Rodriguez, who won two Most Valuable Player Awards as Jeter’s teammate, will not attend, his spokesman, Ron Berkowitz, said, because he decided to be in Miami with his mother for Mother’s Day.

Luis Severino, who was scheduled to start for the Yankees on Saturday, will start Sunday’s early game. Masahiro Tanaka will start the second game.

Tickets for Saturday’s rained-out game will not be honored on Sunday, but they can be exchanged for any regular-season game at Yankee Stadium through the end of 2018, subject to availability. The Yankees said tickets for Sunday’s late game, with the Jeter ceremony, had already sold out.

The unusual scheduling was the work of the Yankees’ chief operating officer, Lonn Trost, who said he rose at 4 a.m. Saturday to check on the weather and decided about an hour later to cancel the game.

In setting Sunday’s schedule, Trost said, he was constrained by the programming requirements of ESPN, which will broadcast the second game and could not move up that game’s start time to accommodate a quick first game.

Working backward from ESPN’s 7:35 p.m. start, the Yankees originally considered scheduling the first game for 3:05 p.m., a suggestion that was abandoned after a consultation with Manager Joe Girardi, who thought that starting time would allow only minimal rest for the players and would be cutting it too close. Consequently, the Yankees settled on a 2:05 p.m. starting time, and to avoid the complications of emptying and refilling the Stadium quickly, they opted for the single-admission plan.

Generally, Trost said, it takes an hour to switch audiences between games of a more conventional day-night, two-admission doubleheader. Because Sunday is Mother’s Day, and many families will be spending the morning and early afternoon together at brunch, the Yankees decided against a more customary 1:05 p.m. start.

“We thought this was the best way to do it to accommodate our fans,” Trost said.

The scheduling compromises may result in many empty seats for the late innings of the second game, Trost said.

“It could be an interesting night,” he said. “We’ve received a lot of feedback from our fans, and it seems like a lot of them might go to the first game, stay for the ceremony and then take their children home since it’s a school night.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SP3 of the New York edition with the headline: Rainout Has Yankees Set to Play Two on Day They Honor No. 2. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe